Elon Musk Steps Down as Chairman & Facebook Privacy News

October 14, 2018

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, reached a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that forces him to give up the chairman’s post for three years. He will be able to remain Tesla’s CEO during that time. Credit: Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Chauncey: Welcome to the Being Found Show. We are the local business guide to being found online by more buying customers. We are going to cover a bit of news from the tech world today.

So the first one up here is fun, and I didn’t even make any notes about it because as soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what it was. Nintendo files a patent for a playable Gameboy cell phone case. Nice. Isn’t that funny. That’s like anybody in my age bracket is like sweet kids it’s like the old school black, and white Gameboy, your flip your phone over and you can fully play the Gameboy. So Nintendo used to have this awesome cartridge for the Gameboy, and it didn’t last long I’m sure due to the durability of the cards.

But for their more advanced Gameboy, they had a cartridge that you could put in it, and you could slide a card on it and then you could collect games. So like you could get Excite Bike, and it was on the magnetic strip of the card, you swipe it, and now you have that game on there to play. I’m guessing the durability of the cards is why it didn’t go far, but it’s hard to think about the fact that Excite Bike can be put on a magnetic strip.

So in bigger news, Elon Musk steps down as Tesla’s chairman over a tweet. So it’s not just our commander in chief who gets himself in trouble on Twitter. Elon Musk, under pressure from his lawyers and investors of Tesla; the company he co-founded, reached a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Saturday to resolve it. The settlement would force him to step aside as chairman for three years and pay twenty million dollars. The deal will allow him to remain as CEO, something he could have jeopardized had he have fought this. He posted a tweet that was misleading investors by saying funding was secured for a buyout of the electric car company at $420 a share. So basically they said we’re not doing that and that’s pretty hardcore.

Jake: It is. I mean this is a very regulated industry; Securities and Exchange. So with that I mean it just doesn’t surprise me. You can’t tell people the price that you’re willing to pay them for something they don’t necessarily own.

Chauncey: He’s back in the news. A month or two ago, he was on with Joe Rogan and smoked pot on camera. The military, which he had clearance rights for, was wondering if they needed to take away that privilege because you’re not allowed to do that.

Jake: I guess there was some backlash from some of his other employees. He has fired employees for failing drug tests and then went ahead and did the same thing. It’s like your parents. They do exactly what they tell you not to.

Chauncey: People are like, “Do you really want your kids to see that?” Listen I do a lot of things my kids aren’t allowed to do like drive a car and vote. There’s a long list of stuff that I do that my kids can’t.

Facebook has confirmed that millions of users did, in fact, have personal data accessed during a serious security breach disclosed late last month.

Initially, the social media giant estimated that 50 million accounts were affected by the hack but said it was not clear whether any information had been stolen.

The last one on our list here is a big one especially because it’s a double hit. Once again it scales politics on the knife’s edge a bit. Facebook’s massive security breach took a turn for the worse last week when the company confirmed attackers might have gained access to third-party applications and websites that allow users to authenticate via the Facebook login.

It’s bad news on top of the news for Facebook which announced the massive incidents on September 28. At least 50 million users were affected when attackers exploited a series of bugs on the platforms “View as Privacy” feature. In July 2017 Facebook introduced that feature which had to do with new privacy settings and uploading video. There was this access token that kept them logged into the app. What would the motivation for attackers be here? This is the touchy one.

The only parties that would be interested in this data are advertisers or nation states trying to undermine or influence or change things in a different country. So they can’t get your money in any way here. They don’t have that kind of access, but they can influence stuff. Of course, advertisers are getting a ton of demographic data.

I know that scares a lot of people. They think they aren’t going in for you or your stuff; they are going in to manipulate the people and stuff around you. They think that they are not affected by it because they are crystal clear in their thinking and everyone else is a sheep. I guess my overall advice that I might give a person is that not everything on the internet is true.

I’ll stop getting all involved in what’s going on on the Internet. I don’t want to get wrapped up in all that political stuff. I’ve started to think everybody who’s a jerk online has some sort of bot that’s trying to manipulate you know. So my advice to everybody is just enjoying the good things the internet has to offer and stay away from the controversy and nonsense that comes with it.

Thank you for listening to this segment of the Being Found Show, to hear the full show listen here: Being Found Show Episode #62 or subscribe to our Podcast.

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The internet has changed marketing and sales forever! I’m here to make sense of this chaos. I want companies to feel confident in their marketing. To be confident, businesses have to know what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what they can do about it.